The First Aussies Have Landed in NZ

Leading Australian show jumper Alison Rowland and a big team of horses from West Australia has arrived safely in Christchurch on the first leg of a two-month New Zealand campaign.

Recent winner of the Australian League of the FEI World Cup series, Rowland heads the Australian onslaught Dunedin-bound to compete in the $50,000 McMillan Equine Feeds Super Grand Prix at Ride The Rhythm next Friday night (February 1).

Rowland is among the first group of Australian riders to arrive, along with eight horses which landed at Christchurch International Airport on a flight from Sydney via Auckland early yesterday, before being transferred to the National Equestrian Centre at McLeans Island. More are scheduled to arrive in the coming days, making it the largest Australian contingent ever to compete on Kiwi soil.

It’s exciting to part of history competing at the first-ever equestrian event to be staged in the Forsyth Barr Stadium. “The competition in Dunedin sounds like it will be amazing,” she says.

The McMillian Equine Feeds Super Grand Prix is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the Ride The Rhythm equestrian programme, before British pop icons The Hollies take to the stage for their only South Island performance as part of their 50^th Anniversary World Tour. The Aussies will come up against an all-star Kiwi line-up which includes Olympians Katie McVean, Daniel Meech, Maurice Beatson and Samantha McIntosh, amongst others.

After much planning, Rowland says it’s great to finally be in New Zealand. “It’s been quite stressful trying to get everything organised. Because we are travelling on to Europe after competing here we have had to pack everything! Now that we are here, it’s a bit of a relief.”

The horses seem to have coped with the journey pretty well, she says. “Coming from WA they are experienced travellers. It’s closer from Sydney to here, than it is from Sydney to WA. They were all a little bit tired and hungry when they arrived, but they all seem to be fine and are settling in well to their new surroundings.”

Coming off the back of an impressive season, Rowland is expecting big things from her mares, full-sisters Bickley Brook Bianca and Bickley Brook Bella, while in New Zealand, but she’s filled with both nervousness and excitement about the weeks that lay ahead as they head directly to Europe in a bid to qualify for the Australian team for the World Equestrian Games in Normandy, France, in 2014, and ultimately the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“It’s a day-to-day proposition. We have made a programme for the horses, and now all we can do is hope that it goes according to plan. You just never know what’s around the corner.”

It is the first time Rowland has ever been to the South Island. She last competed here as part of an Aussie team at Isola in 1992.

Rowland and the rest of the West Australian camp head to Waimate at the end of the week to compete at the South Canterbury North Otago Area ESNZ 2* show, before travelling south to Dunedin.

Ride The Rhythm is the first event of the inaugural Long White Cloud Tour which will take in seven jumping events right through to Horse of the Year in March, and has a combined total of more than $350,000 in prize money up for grabs. Other events on the tour are the New Zealand National Showjumping Championships and the Canterbury Championships, which are both in Christchurch, followed by the one star Manfeild Park in Feilding, the three star Taranaki Showjumping Championships in Hawera, and Showjumping’s Holy Grail – the first of the trans-Tasman tests – being held at the Church Road Winery in Hawke’s Bay, which is the weekend before the Horse of the Year Show.

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